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What happened when Alison Azer met the PM

My heart breaks for Alison Azer and her family but I feel the deck of cards have been stacked against her and all efforts to rescue her children by our government have failed miserably. I hoped the law would work and rescue the children when they traveled from Iraq to Iran. Now that they are in Iran, I don’t feel anything will change until the children are mature based on this information from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Part of the reason I married my husband was for his knowledge of family. He had 8 brothers and sisters who all lived in Iran. I felt we shared similar family values. This is something I missed because my mother abandoned me when I was about 4 and in retaliation my father internationally abducted my brother and me when I was 4 1/2 … over 4 decades ago. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau helped my grandmother reunite my mother with us. After about one year, my parents decided to separate and I returned to Canada with my mother and my brother remained behind with my father and he eventually went to boarding school in Australia. My brother and I only saw each other every two years for 6 weeks when they returned to Canada on vacation. I always wondered why my brother did not return to Canada and live with us for his education. I was always sad when I had to say goodbye to my brother.

I expect the 4 Azer children are much happier because the Azer family will rally around them and dote on them and make them feel loved. To survive in Iran means you have to hustle and I wouldn’t put bribery past anyone. The country would welcome Saren, a Canadian-trained doctor, back with open arms. As long as Saren doesn’t do anything to upset the government I expect he will get whatever he wants from the Iranian government. The lack of knowledge and the court’s inability to protect Canadian children’s rights have failed these 4 children and caused immense pain to Alison, her family, and all Canadians because the gaps and lack of knowledge remain. Click here to read the full article or an excerpt below.

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You know, I’m a mom who hasn’t seen her kids in nine months. But those weren’t the first photographs I’ve seen of my children since they’ve been kidnapped. I’ve probably had a dozen photos and videos, and kind of narrative of where my kids are and what they’re doing. It wouldn’t surprise most people that the photographs that I’ve seen don’t bear a lot of resemblance to what he’s posted, and that’s his prerogative. He is after all an international fugitive, a wanted man. What I read in Saren’s words – because, after all, I was married to him for over 10 years, I’ve known him since 1999. I know the tone, I know the phrases that are correlated to desperation and panic. If his life, and, by extension, as he suggests, the lives of the children, are so blissful, you’re a wanted fugitive, just put your head down and lead your so-called blissful life. The only reason, in my opinion, that he is speaking out now or breaking the silence, I think were some of the phrases that I’ve heard, is because he’s not doing very well. He can’t get work in Iran because his credentials are those of a wanted fugitive. He’s gone back to a country that he said would execute him if he ever returned. He’s putting his family there – his mom, his four brothers, four sisters, and their families – in a really precarious set of circumstances. He’s a desperate man, and that’s what I saw in that exercise of him emerging on social media.